A trip to New Orleans means crabcakes, oysters and beignets to Carolyn Hart,
as she sets out on a gastronomic tour of the Deep South.

"Hey Ma," said my son Max’s text. "I’ve been evacuated…" Where to, and why, are the kind of questions mothers ask next.

"I’m hitch-hiking from Baton Rouge to Miami," he elaborated. "In a truck driven by someone called Manny who doesn’t speak English. We’re going through the last bit of Isaac. Quite hairy…"

It’s the curse of the information age – a whole load of stuff you’d rather not know and can’t do anything about anyway while sitting on a sofa in south-east London. "For God’s sake," I texted back, "please tell me as soon as you get to Miami…"

He didn’t, natch, but Max’s Hurricane Isaac experience, encountered two weeks after he had started a year’s American studies course at Tulane University in New Orleans, made me determined to visit – if only to make sure he had got back from Miami.

Three months later, when all threats of hurricane had evaporated, a friend and I landed at Houston. You can’t fly directly to New Orleans; it involves a stopover and then a brief flight to New Orleans itself. Or you can take the short hop to Lafayette and drive. The first option means that you bypass the Deep South and arrive in the heart of what often seems like an outpost of the old French and Spanish empires, without touching down in modern-day America at all.

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The second introduces you to a world of ante-bellum estates, Civil War legacies and the extensive swamplands of Louisiana (covering some 20,000 square miles along the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi), and gives you a provincial foretaste of the raucous Southern culinary ethos of gumbo, grits and jambalaya that forms a major part of the New Orleans diet – something that as a food writer I had been particularly keen to experience. On this occasion the latter option fitted well with our agenda – to immerse ourselves in the American South and its food in the short time available, and to make sure the aforementioned son was still alive.

I had read, in preparation for Max’s departure, the introduction to the Picayune newspaper’s 1901 Creole Cookbook, thinking it might give him some ideas for student subsistence in the city Thackeray had described as "the old Franco-Spanish city on the banks of the Mississippi where… you can eat the most and suffer the least, where Claret is as good as Bordeaux, and where a ragout… can be had the like of which was never eaten in Marseilles or Paris…" – and was immediately hooked.

Creole cooking, the Picayune went on to explain, originated from the ‘negro cooks of nearly 200 years ago, carefully instructed and directed by their white creole mistresses, who received their inheritance of gastronomic lore from France’. This was followed by the arrival of "an influx of rich and stately dishes, brought over by the grand dames of Spain a century and a half ago… after which came the gradual amalgamation of the two races on Louisiana soil, and with this evolved a new school of cookery, partaking of the best elements of French and Spanish cuisines, and yet peculiarly distant from either…"

Of course, things weren’t always quite as tremendous as the Picayune had predicted. Our first taste of the South was New Iberia, home to the crime writer James Lee Burke, where we checked into La Quinta, one of a chain of utilitarian hotels – modern, clean and very unexciting – with a built-in breakfast that is as shocking to European sensibilities as the size of the steaks on your plate at dinner. You really need a child or a starving student to appreciate its charms – for jet-lagged adults, its main advantage is its proximity to Avery Island.

Tabasco is ubiquitous in the Deep South. Photo: Kael Alford

Avery Island is the spit of swampy land lying on a salt mound, surrounded by bayous, levees and alligators, that forms the headquarters of Tabasco, the hot sauce company. It didn’t take long to realise that a bottle of Tabasco is found on every table in Louisiana – as necessary to the cooking as brown sauce is to the bacon sandwich. So it seemed fitting to kick off a trip to the Deep South with a glimpse of the hot sauce homeland. Avery Island is a magical place, made all the more intriguing by the presence of warehouses full of ageing casks of hot chilli pepper sauce and a bottling plant that churns out every single bottle of Tabasco sauce ever sold in the world.

Next year, Tabasco hopes to have launched its own restaurant, but on this occasion, lunch was destined to be at Rita Mae’s in Morgan – a cafe supposedly run from someone’s front room. The route south from New Iberia to New Orleans takes two forms: the fast Route 90 (shortly to be come Interstate 49) and the slower LA182 to the little town of Franklin. Morgan, the next stop along on this stretch, is a fishing town on the Atchafalaya river. It hosts the annual shrimp and petroleum festival – a heady combination of its two modern industries.

Rita Mae's diner. Photo: Kael Alford

The streets of Morgan on a Thursday morning are so empty that you feel that some kind of apocalyptic event has taken place, extinguishing all human life, leaving only birds and vegetation behind. But turn a corner, and you come across Rita Mae’s. Disappointingly, it was not actually in someone’s parlour, but operated from what used to be a private house, and was run by Rita Mae herself, and her granddaughter Tanisha Lewis.

An hour later, and it was plain that this is where the entire town congregates to lunch on gumbo, crabcakes and bread pudding. Rita Mae was a fine example of how Louisiana cooking retains its native origins while tasting thoroughly European. Rita Mae’s crabcakes were light, spicy and delicate; the gumbo, a subtle shrimpy stew full of flavour. Her bread pudding, on the other hand, was pure Louisiana – if you’re not a fan, nothing will persuade you that this concoction of baked stale bread, milk, eggs, raisins and spice is edible.

If you like that kind of thing, Rita Mae’s is one of the best. You shouldn’t pig out totally, however. Further into town on Brashear Avenue is the Donut Shop, where 26 types of donuts are made by Teasha Thibodeaux. You can buy 12 donut balls for $3, which will last you all the way to New Orleans.

Morgan is also home to one of the oddest – and there are many to choose from – places en route: the Brownell Memorial Park five-acre swamp trail along Lake Palourde, the setting for the original Tarzan film and now a walk that is enlivened by snakes, alligators, vast cobwebs and their attendant spiders and a carillon tower crowned by 61 bells (imported from Belgium) that chime out hymns every quarter hour. Nearby lurks a wooden hut that could have been lifted from the pages of an Ingalls Wilder novel. Inside is a mass of information on the tower and the bells, and notes on how they came to be there, charming the alligators and the visitors.

A cypress swamp in Brownell Memorial Park. Photo: Kael Alford

The swamp is an extraordinary natural phenomenon. Both sinister and beautiful, its combination of hanging moss, brackish water, half-submerged vegetation and knobbly Cypress knees is fascinating. The idea, though, that you’d quite likely end up in the jaws of an alligator if you put a foot wrong is hard to banish. The best way to see it is by boat, and there are many companies around that will take you out, but just outside Morgan, conveniently located beside a tourist information office, is Cajun Jack and his tour boat. Jack, with a face carved out of swamp oak, used to run the business with his brother, who died 18 years ago but still features, a raccoon perched on his shoulder, on the front of the leaflet.

‘I am still so angry with him for dying,’ Jack confided, not entirely reassuringly. Fortuitously, he takes only groups of eight out for a minimum of two hours ($35pp) so, as an unprofitable twosome, we could back away politely without causing offence.

Before arriving in New Orleans, it is a good idea to stop off at Thibodaux to visit the Wetlands Acadian Cultural Centre. This museum offers a potted history of Louisiana, from its foundation in 1699 by French settlers to being sold back to the Americans after Independence by Napoleon in 1803 (for $15 million), the Battle of New Orleans, in which General Jackson took on the British troops, the Civil War in 1861 and the discovery of oil in 1901.

It is the last event that has made Louisiana rich but also, ironically, may lead to its downfall: flooding. The region was formed from sediment washed down by the Mississippi, which runs through Louisiana from north to south for about 600 miles, creating enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh and swamp and small islands along the Gulf of Mexico. The state, at its highest point, is 163m above sea level but the coast and swamplands are only 3m. They are one of the fastest disappearing regions in the world – partly as a result of canals being dug for the oil and gas industries, which allow storms to move seawater inland. A terrifying statistic suggests that Louisiana is losing land mass equivalent to 30 football fields a day.

And then of course there are the hurricanes. The geography of the region – bayous, marshes and inlets – makes hurricanes particularly destructive. In August 1856 Hurricane One (category 4) hit Last Island, the 25-mile-long barrier island along the coast and split it into five separate islands. More than 200 people were killed. That paved the way for a catalogue of winds ranging from Andrew and Betsy right up to Katrina in 2005, which breached and undermined the levees in New Orleans, causing 80 per cent of the city to flood, and Isaac in 2012.

A view of the Mississippi from the Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans. Photo: Kael Alford

Driving into New Orleans allows you to travel along the ingenious road system that gives the impression of flying inches above the swamps that surround the city. The roads are built on stilts and take you through a wide, flat blue landscape where skies merge with water, and which is striped by the single black trunks of dead trees or, occasionally, whole forests of Cypress trees, where egrets and ibis lurk in the shallows. It is an enchanted country that doesn’t quite prepare you for the sight of New Orleans, appearing like a mirage of towers on the horizon, its palm trees wreathed in fairy lights and the walls of the Superdome pulsating with light.

Having saved a bit at La Quinta, we could splash out on the five-star Windsor Court Hotel. There are many chic boutique hotels in the French Quarter of New Orleans but the Windsor Court on Gravier Street has the kind of old-fashioned comfort that one associates with the Savoy or Claridge’s. It pays to have a room as high up as possible, on the Mississippi side, because this is pretty much the only view you’ll get of this river; in the city itself, it is kept firmly behind flood walls. You could spend all day watching from the 22nd floor as the oil tankers perform manoeuvres to round a bend in the river, but there was the missing son to unearth – and there he was, charmingly attired in Deep South student threads and very keen on the idea of dinner at Cochon, a restaurant that conforms to the Creole Cookbook’s belief that ‘the old Creoles, like their French ancestors, held that every portion of the hog is good, and all portions are utilised in the various dishes which are so delightfully prepared in New Orleans.’

Unusually for America as a whole, but like New York, New Orleans is a city where it is good to walk. There are some areas into which you shouldn’t stray, but especially if you've limited time, sticking to the French Quarter, Magazine and Royal will be a terrific introduction.

Bananas Foster are flambeed at Brennan's. Photo: Kael Alford

First things first: have breakfast at Brennan’s. This is a city institution, run by a family with roots in Ireland. It is housed in an old townhouse, built by Degas’ great-grandfather, with a beautiful outside courtyard. It has a huge menu that includes a typical antebellum breakfast: brandy milk punch or peach schnapps and champagne, followed by turtle soup, egg hussarde, ribeye steak, mushrooms, flambéed bananas Foster and a shot of absinthe, plus more champagne throughout. That all comes with a side order of cinnamon toast and a very good bread pudding. You could just sit here and wait for lunch, but one of the delights of New Orleans is the architecture – and to see that you have to get up and walk.

Take an organised tour, or just wander (two houses in the French Quarter to visit are Hermann Grima House above Bourbon and Gallier House just off Royal Street), and then head for the Café du Monde for a restorative café au lait and beignets (deep-fried donuts smothered in icing sugar, $2.42, or get your coffee in a take-away souvenir mug for $6.61) while being serenaded by a Cajun blues guitar player.

Beignets at the Café du Monde. Photo: Kael Alford

The Café du Monde is the city’s meeting point. It is right on the banks of the Mississippi, behind a massive flood wall, but this is one of the few places where you can get up on to the river walk and watch the oil tankers gliding past at eye level. Across the road is Jackson Square and St Patrick’s Cathedral; further down the road is Central Grocery, home of the original muffuleta – a gigantic sandwich large enough to feed a family of four for a day, containing layers of ham, salami, cheese, mortadella, salad and olives in Italian bread. You can sit in the back of the grocery to eat your sandwich, or, if you’re feeling strong, carry it away, ‘cut and wrapped to travel’. Beyond Central Grocery is the French Market, seething with the kind of chic goth-punk characters who throng the streets of New Orleans. There are 250,000 people in New Orleans who speak French, and the food, the architecture and the shops all reflect this; the music that assaults you from every street corner, however, is entirely Cajun. It is exhilarating, noisy, rhythmic and thoroughly enlivening. Indeed, it is impossible while wandering these streets to feel anything but exhilarated. Years fall away. Everyone looks – and you feel – like a student here.

The French Quarter. Photo: Kael Alford

Behind the French Market lies the French Quarter, a maze of narrow streets lined with the characteristic houses with their iron verandas. This is where Brangelina bought land to build new houses for those made homeless by Katrina, and where Nicolas Cage briefly lived in a haunted house – or so the stories go. If you’re hungry again search out the Croissant d’Or patisserie on Ursuline, a one-time Italian ice-cream parlour, which makes its own croissants.

Croissant D'Or patisserie. Photo: Kael Alford

Soon it was time to reconnect with Max, who had agreed to try out the drop-in New Orleans School of Cooking on St Louis Street. Kevin Belton, the chef, is an ebullient New Orleans version of Ainsley Harriott. ‘The less time you spend cooking, the better you’ll be at Louisiana cooking,’ was his reassuring line – and he was full of useful information. ‘The Louisiana soil dictated that they grew peppers rather than carrots,’ he told us. ‘Hence the use of the holy trinity of Louisiana cooking – onion, celery and pepper – which forms the basis of almost all Cajun and Creole food.’ Belton knocked up a jambalaya with rice and some pecan praline, which he said we could eat straight out of the bag, or crumble on sweet potatoes and bake.

By this point Max was aching to get back to real New Orleans, aka the bars on Frenchmen Street. ‘It’s over there,’ he said, waving vaguely, so we walked for six or seven blocks and found ourselves in Mojitos Rum Bar & Grill, which has a courtyard with palm trees, a mariachi band and a menu of small plates of alligator bites (like chicken nuggets, but with alligator), fried green tomatoes and crabcakes. ‘Every 21-year-old’s dream is to have parents who own a courtyard like this,’ Max said. ‘And then they go away for a fortnight, so you can have a party – and this is the party you’d have.’

Outside on Frenchmen, the atmosphere had come alive; lone guitarists played on pavement corners, fire-eaters consumed their wares in a vacant lot and inside the bars live music mingled with the roar of conversation. In the Spotted Cat the Cottonmouth Kings were entertaining the clientele, while down the road in DBA, an early 30s bar, Walter ‘Wolfman’ Washington does a four-hour rhythm and blues set every Wednesday night, playing the guitar with his teeth. At midnight the Frenchmen art market was still going strong – a vast yard filled with stalls of art, jewellery, clothing and furniture where you can sit at a table lit by an ancient lamp and have a drink, and let the rhythm and blues wash over you.

Houmas Hall in Darrow, Louisiana. Photo: Kael Alford

This may be the best place in the world to be a student – it’s pretty good for ancient adults too – but in case the atmosphere begins to get to you, and you start looking at house prices – take a brief trip out of the city to Houmas. This is a plantation house, 50 miles down the road that runs past Lake Pontchartrain heading towards Houston. Houmas, once the property of John Burnside, who in 1858 had 358,000 acres of sugar cane and 8,000 mules and was so rich that he had the railway redirected to his front door, is now owned by Kevin Kelly, who bought it because he ‘loves plantation houses’ and is restoring it to its original state.

Purists might blench slightly as they enter the impressive hallway and find that Kelly’s restoration has involved getting rid of the white Greek revival interiors beloved by 19th-century billionaires, and reinstating murals, black paint and a load of worrying life-size puppets, not to mention cabinets of photographs depicting the wedding of his two dogs. Outside, the 16-acre garden, ‘once just grass and trees’ according to Kelly, has now got flower beds, statues and pavilions, but nothing can destroy the beauty of the remaining live oaks, nor the avenue of trees leading up to the front door. It’s a terrific day out – just don’t go if you’re an old-school National Trust devotee of a sensitive disposition. Back in the city, Max was keen to move on to Juan’s Flying Burrito restaurant, where Mexican food met punk rock, noisily and deliciously.

The next day we had to fly home, leaving behind an enchanted city – a place, like Venice with added voodoo, that sometimes seems to the outside world to be dancing crazily on the brink of destruction.